Girls
by Scarabbug
Summary: He’s fallen asleep on her shoulder. This, in itself, isn’t totally weird. It’s a little uncomfortable, sure, and she has to keep her head tilted just so to avoid having an eye poked out, but still… And of course, the girls are giggling. Oneshot.


**I think it's best to think of this as a drabble-like oneshot, happening in some weird, nonexistent apocalyptic occurrence some time between KC Grand Prix and Memory World. Standard disclaimers apply. **

* * *

Girls.

He's fallen asleep on her shoulder.

This, in itself, isn't totally weird. It's a little _uncomfortable_, sure, and she has to keep her head tilted just _so_ to avoid having an eye poked out, but still, it's not that out of the ordinary.

After all, they all just saved the world today (again… how many times had it worked out that way now? Six? Seven?). It's not their fault that they all have to contend with the very much underrated problem of post-heroic-emotional-exhaustion. It happens to all of them once in a while, today just happens to be Yuugi's turn. It's really nothing odd at all.

What _is_ a little odd –and this is the part which is making Anzu's face turn even redder than it would have done had it been just the _regular_ Yuugi fast asleep against her shoulder– is the fact that the world has been saved for going on forty-five minutes now. They're already on a bus heading back through the ridiculously crowded traffic that always seems to build up after an averted apocalypse of this kind, (luckily for them, the incoming disaster happened to be within a bus journey's distance of Domino this time instead of, oh… in Australia, for example). And yet despite all of that, The Other Yuugi has yet to return to the confines of the Sennen Puzzle.

So that means it's _him_, not the regular Yuugi, who is currently asleep on her shoulder.

Help.

She's not entirely sure how she knows it's _Him_; she just does. Lord only knows what the regular Yuugi is doing –he's quite possibly asleep as well– but Anzu isn't going to… complain about it. After all, they both really, really need a rest, and she supposes it doesn't really matter which of them is on the surface, so long as they both get it.

Maybe it's got something to do with the fact that she _knows_ the regular Yuugi doesn't… snore. Not even quietly. Or at least, he _didn't_ when they were ten and still able to have sleepover sessions (or in her case, sessions where she'd spend the night at the game store to avoid the fighting in her own home) without alerting the panic-buttons of every parent in the vicinity.

The Other Yuugi… _does_. Snore, that is. And not all that quietly. How this works when they're sharing the exact same body is, once again, completely and utterly beyond her but… she supposes it could be worse. It could've been Jounouchi. So Anzu is just going to continue doing her best to ignore the whispered giggles coming from somewhere at the back of the bus.

As it happens, the two teenage girls _doing_ the whispering are in her geography class, and she just knows she's going to be subjected to the "who's dating who" and "ooh, look, she's blushing so it must be true!" routine the second they get to school tomorrow. She's trying not to care too much about that, she _really_ is, but… it's still kind of embarrassing. Because she knows exactly what those girls are like. She knows that she's not going to hear the end of this for a very, very long time.

'Look at them; you _know_ it's her, don't you?'

The one who just spoke is Yoshida Madoka. Definitely one of the Geography Girls. _The_ Geography Girl to look out for, if Anzu remembers rightly. The one who probably has her name written inside a little "heart" shape on the desk of every male in the class (except for perhaps a select few whom Anzu happens to call her friends). She's not as big a bitch as some of the girls that Anzu knows, but she wouldn't exactly gain points for social conscience if she ever entered a "Miss Domino" Beauty Pageant.

'I know, I _know_.' And _that_ one is Alice Morioka. Better known as lackey to the aforementioned Yoshida.

'I never thought…' Anzu's not sure who that last one is. She doesn't sound like a Geography Girl. She seems far too… polite. Even as she's gossiping, Anzu can hear her hesitate, as if she realises Anzu is listening in on every word of their conversation.

'Then you're blind as a bat, Gifu. How _long's_ he been sat like that?'

'Since we got on the bus. She's nearly lost an eye five times thanks to that insane hairstyle of his.'

Actually Anzu only counts twice. A part of her wants to turn around and say that but, somehow, she resists.

'It's a little sweet, really, don't you think?'

'…Man, Gifu, you really _are_ a nut. If those two are _sweet_ and even the slightest bit _workable_, then I'm the queen of Sheba'

Oh, you're certainly not _that_, Yoshida. You're nothing near that at all.

'Heh. Still, those two. We should've guessed it. I mean, she's _always_ acting like his bodyguard.')

The statement is followed by yet more giggling. Anzu bites her lip and resists the urge to rub her eye.

It isn't so much who she _is_, so much as how the other girls in class interpret it that bothers her. These days, she's known as "that Mazaki girl", who hangs around with all the boys and _just_ the boys. And not even the very _popular_ ones. It annoys Anzu something awful, because as far as she's aware, she doesn't even _flirt_ with any of them. Or at least she's _fairly_ sure she doesn't. Not like that girl Nosaka, or Temiko from History Class. They flirt and tease everything male in their vicinity like there's no tomorrow, up to the point at which Anzu feels just about ready to throw up. And yet for some reason it's _her_ –the _one_ girl in her class who just happens to have friends who _are_ boys and not just objects for emotional seduction, who is targeted as a flirt.

But… no. That isn't fair of her and she knows it. It isn't like _all_ the girls behave that way. Not even Nosaka. They've even sat together at lunch once or twice, and Anzu remembers the two of them having some pretty nice discussions. The kind of talks that almost make Anzu sad that she doesn't _have_ more female friend and…

…And one of the Other Yuugi's hair "spikes" (there's really no other word to describe it) just stabbed her in the eye again.

Ouch..

Maybe she _does_ need more female friends. Female friends can probably fall asleep on her shoulder and have it e classed as a "typical teenage girly thing", so nobody would give them a second glance. An old lady sitting across the carriage looks as if she doesn't know whether to tut or smile. Jounouchi and Honda are sniggering (maybe at the two of them, but Anzu's can never be totally sure where her boys are concerned). Bakura is sitting nearby, but Anzu things he'd fallen asleep too, with his head against the window. (Sometimes Bakura's just so quiet that it's difficult to tell). The girls on the backseat continue to whisper. Anzu could swear she hears one of them muttering her name. Her ears are burning. They always burn when she knows somebody is talking about her.

Yuugi –well, the Other One– snorts in his sleep.

And now she knows for certain than the boys are sniggering at _her_.

('Check it out. The wooden-mannequin slayer just passed out on the damsel in distress.'

'…On the _what_, now?' Anzu consciously notices the volume of her voice and lowers it before continuing, 'I'll have you know I was in _total_ control of that situation, Jounouchi.'

'Heh. Sure you were, Anzu, those wooden solider giants _totally_ didn't have you strung up from the ceiling, hanging over a colossal toaster.'

'Toaster? I thought it was waffle iron.'

'Oh, shut _up_, mister "oh-my-god, don't-let-the-clockwork-spider-eat-me!" and "where's-the-bathroom-in-this-labyrinth-hell-trap?" We all know that you weren't exactly the picture of heroism.'

'Hah. Yeah, I guess we should cut them some slack, Jounouchi. I mean actually, it _is_ kinda cute.' He gives The Other Yuugi a poke with a finger. Which would probably be dangerous, if he were a little more… conscious? 'In a noisy way.'

'Uh-huh. And that goes for _you_ too, Honda. Put a sock in it already or I'll chuck you off at the next stop.'

'Yeah maybe you would like to, but the problem is that to _do_ that you'd have to _move_, Anzu, and he looks _really_ comfortable there.'

'He _sounds_ really comfortable too.'

'_Honda_.'

'Sorry, sorry. I'll be good.'

The look on his face tells Anzu that Honda's really not sorry at all.)

Honda. A few people in her classes seem to think she's dating him (though doubtless that rumour will have altered a bit more by the time she gets to her next geography lesson). For the life of her Anzu can't work out _why_. Maybe it's since he's always showing up to wait for her after school ends and they walk the same route half the way home. Or maybe they just equate beating people over the head with text books whenever they get annoying to secretly being in love. (If that were the case, she'd probably have been married to just about every single one of this lot by now.)

She's not quite sure what they think about her and Ryou, but she knows that some of the girls are jealous, in that respect because all the girls _like_ him. He's just that kind of guy, who girls always notice and who just can't deal with that fact. This is probably why he hangs around Anzu a lot –because she's pretty much the only girl in school who _doesn't_ try to woo him every time they meet briefly in a corridor. She likes to smile at the girls who glare whenever she and Ryou have been talking before a lesson. Which is silly and childish of her, she knows but… _damn it_. They shouldn't eye him up like that. She's gotten a little tired of every boy and girl (okay, not _every_ boy and girl) in the school using each other as eye candy. In fact, she'd be willing to bet all of her Dance-Study-Saving that if the "no dating within school" rules were revoked; the students at Domino High wouldn't find those illicit parties and sleepovers nearly as entertaining as they do.

Anzu really, really doesn't get it. She doesn't _get_ why girls her own age act the way they do, and maybe that's because she just hasn't spent enough time with them. It's always been about her and her boys.

Still it's hardly _her_ fault.

She…

She doesn't want to say it might be Yuugi's, because it's not. Not really. But Anzu knows the trouble really started for her when she began to hang around with him. Maybe she can be even more specific than that and say that the day the problem started was the one when he bought her that toy game for her birthday and she sat on the step outside all through recess playing it and trying to beat just the first damn level.

She never did finish that game. Oh well.

And then the Other Yuugi came and…

And he wasn't the first Yuugi Anzu ever saw. He was just the first Yuugi she ever really _looked_ at. Like _that_, she means. And he'd shown her something terrible and beautiful and strange and bizarre all in one breath.

And now he's fast asleep on her shoulder. And snoring. Rather loudly.

Anzu just knows Fate is really _enjoying_ playing screwy games with her.

'I wish they'd _cut it out_ back there,' Anzu doesn't realise she's said this aloud until she sees Jounouchi look up and turn around to see what she's referring to. 'No! Don't _look_ at them, you idiot. I don't want to attract their attention.'

'Who? Those girls? What about em?'

'They're… _staring_.'

'So, wake him up.'

'She can't do that, he's sleeping.'

'Go figure, Sherlock. He won't mind.'

Anzu grits her teeth and tilts to avoid the hair again. She's getting pretty good at that. 'No, you're _not_ waking him up. He just saved the world….' Again. 'He earned it.'

She hears Jounouchi sniggering more beneath his breath. 'So, what, all I have to do to earn the right to use you as a pillow in inconvenient places is save the world a couple'a times in a night? Sounds easy enough. Where do I sign up?'

'You're an idiot sometimes, you know that Jounouchi?'

'What do you mean just "sometimes", Anzu? He's _always_ an idiot in some way, shape or form.'

'Watch it, Hiroto, or else it'll be _you_ who's takin' a nap.'

'Y'know, I say we should whisper about _them_ as loudly as we can and see how they like it.'

Anzu grits her teeth against a sigh. A part of her wants to sleep as well. It's dark outside of the window and it must be… what? Half ten? Maybe eleven-o-clock by now. She knows none of them will even get home tonight. They'll just fall asleep in the Game store, or something, and have to be woken up early next morning so that they can get home in time without their parents finding they were gone (Grandpa Muto is great at helping them out there). If she listens very closely, she can hear Ryou snoring a little, too.

Never mind the fact that they're going to have to cram for the Trigonometry test the day after tomorrow. They're all tired, beaten up, and are going home to rest at last. Unlike the idiots on the back row who are probably going to spend their night at some club they're too young to get into. The little group Anzu chose to spend her high school years hanging out with doesn't get that kind of luxury. Not if they want to pass their tests, get enough sleep and stay alive.

She wonders again, how exactly her boys can still be making _jokes_ right now.

She wonders how those girls would react if they knew that it was her –with a lot of help from the group gathered around her and the boy (or whatever the spirit of the puzzle is) who's got his head on her shoulder– who prevented the freeway from being turned into a messy bloodbath caused by giant, wind-up dragons at five-o-clock this morning.

'Jounouchi… what are you doing?'

'Shhh!'

Jounouchi has his deck out and is trying to amuse himself for the rest of the journey by balancing it on the Other Yuugi's head. Anzu just stares at him throughout this whole process, watching him trying not to snigger while oh-so-carefully placing his deck between two of the protruding spikes of Yuugi (and The Other Yuugi)'s hair. It holds it very well, actually.

'Oh, Jounouchi, you're such a _boy_.'

'Yeah, thanks for noticing that. Now don't move your shoulder, m'trying to keep him still.'

Honda bursts into quiet hysterics behind his hand. Near the other window, Ryou blinks at them blearily for a second and Anzu doesn't have the time (nor the need) to explain things to him, because he's soon closed them again and fallen back asleep.

She casts her attention very discreetly back to the Geography Girl's end of the bus.

'See, now _he's_ trying to get her attention.'

'Oh, honestly, I don't _believe_ her.'

'She hasn't any shame. She's _always_ with them all the time all the time. Have _you_ ever seen her hanging out with girls?'

'You'd think she could do better than _that_…'

'What? That what?

'That… star head.'

One of them snorts with laughter and Anzu can picture her covering her mouth and see spiteful eyes flickering in the artificial bus light. It makes Anzu's blood boil, but she forces herself to keep entirely still for the sake of the Other Yuugi's sleep.

'Actually maybe she could do better than _all of them_.'

'You sure about that one, Gifu?

'Well… no.'

'She's compensating. See, she knows that she can't get so much as one good one so she just grabs as many freaks as she can. There's strength in numbers, that's what they _do_._'_

'Oh, _Madoka_.'

'Well, I'm just saying, aren't I? "If it looks and _acts_ like one"…'

'Well there's that Bakura boy. He's nice, don't you think? And she's always hanging around him too, especially before gym. In those _shorts_.'

'Who, him? Quiet boy? I don't _know_.'

'I don't _care_. Anyway, I bet he's the peak of her aspirations.'

'That Mazaki girl… urgh. She just drives me _mad_.'

…Okay, so maybe not all the girls in class have a crush on Ryou Bakura.

There's hair in her eye again, and now it's _really_ watering, a lot more than it was before, so she actually has to rub her eyes. Which makes the guys look at her funny. Honda's whispering again, but he's not really sniggering anymore and Jounouchi's casting irritated micro-glances in the direction of the back seat and Anzu really, really hopes he keeps his mouth shut, because her eyes are just watering a little because Yuugi's hair keeps nearly poking them out and surely Jounouchi doesn't think she's actually...

Anzu sniffs. She doesn't mean to and doesn't really know why she does but… she does, and that's all there is to it. So what? So she's a little sniffly right now, it's just because Yuugi keeps nearly blinding her. It's got absolutely nothing to do with the girls on the back seat.

Anyway, Anzu can't honestly believe just how Yuugi's hair manages to _do_ what it's doing (which is both nearly blinding her in one eye _and_ supporting the weight of a forty-card duelling deck). She swears it's never this tough when it's just the regular Yuugi in control of their shared body. What, does the Other Him use Shadow Magic to gel it up at the roots whenever he takes over the body, or something?

That thought made her smile a little, even though her eyes are still watering (thereby further convincing her that she needed to spend more time around females –though not the kind of females who are currently making jokes on the backseat of the bus behind them) and she tries to shift a little bit without waking…

'…G'nore them.'

Anzu blinks and jolts a little more than she intends to. '…Yuugi?'

'I said… ignore them.' The Other Yuugi mutters. He doesn't actually open his eyes and if Anzu didn't know better, she'd swear he actually wasn't awake at all but… apparently he is. And, also apparently, he's been listening in. 'They simply don't appreciate it.'

Anzu sniffs again. 'Ah… They don't appreciate what, exactly?'

And then the spirit says something Anzu cold never in her life have imagined him saying. '…The value of a comfortable shoulder.'

_The value of a…_ What on _earth_?

Anzu can't think what to say to that. Nor can she shrug in confusion, seeing as the Other Yuugi's head is still firmly planted on her shoulder with no intention of moving. The boys behind her are blinking, Anzu can hear it. (Which is weird, because how the heck can you _hear_ blinking?) She's also very aware that her face, far from being a rather dim shade of red, is now surpassing the colour of sunburn. 'I… O-okay.'

The Other Yuugi harrumphs slightly in satisfaction. 'N'tell Jounouchi…take those duel monsters cards off'fme.'

That's the last thing he says. A few seconds later he's snoring again and Anzu is once again ducking to the left to avoid being attacked by his hair. Jounouchi lets out a breath. '…Okay, seriously, _that _is just darn _creepy_.'

Anzu sighs a little into the Other Yuugi's hair. 'Just take the duel cards off his head, Jounouchi. I don't really want him casting Yami No Games out of annoyance when he's only semi conscious.'

Jounouchi does as Anzu tells him, and with that, peace seemed to reign on the bus to central Domino, for a little while, at least. The girls at the back appear to have fallen silent, and Anzu feels herself smiling just a little. Because she knows they know they've been spotted, and either way… she finds that she's not blushing anymore, because she doesn't really _care_ about what the Geography Girls have to say about "_That Mazaki Girl" _and_ "That Yuugi Muto_".

After all, there _is_ something to be said about being the girl with the comfortable shoulder. Especially when you have _that_ kind of hair.

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End file.
